Note 292 — CHAPTER 13 H. H. RICHARDSON AND McKIM, MEAD & WHITE

The conceptual organization of the exterior has seemed to most critics to have been borrowed from a much later monument, Henri Labrouste’s Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris of the 1840s, even though McKim would not admit it. There is certainly none of Labrouste’s exposed metalwork in the interior; but the extensive use of Guastavino tile vaults, at this time a real technical innovation, is worth noting.